Sunday, June 30, 2013

Hawkeye #11 - A Review

This month's issue of Hawkeye, like last month's issue, sees Matt Fraction and David Aja playing with the idea of how graphic fiction works. However, this issue is very different from Hawkeye #10, which played with stories being told through multiple viewpoints, with ideas being introduced out of sequence. This month's issue, by contrast, is told entirely from the perspective of Lucky a.k.a. Pizza Dog a.k.a. Arrow a.k.a. Hawkeye's Dog.

The only story I can think of that has attempted to tell this kind of story in quite the same way is the episode of The Simpsons where Bart took his dog to obedience school and we were treated to a dog's eye view of the world, with everything rendered in black and white and all human language depicted as a series of drones except for certain key words. The language is treated in a similar fashion here but Lucky's perspective is further augmented by pictograms depicting what Lucky smells and hears that the humans around him miss. It turns out they miss a lot and Lucky has a run-in with his former owners in the Pottsylvanian Mafia trying to investigate a murder that occurred right under Clint Barton's nose.

This is, to put it simply, a brilliant idea and it is very well-executed graphically and textually. I imagine dog lovers - even those who aren't usually comic readers - might get a kick out of this story, just for the novelty value. The one flaw? The final scene, which would really have benefited from having the full dialogue that Matt Fraction writes so well. What happens is clear but I really want to know the exact words that are said!